State Capitalism vs. Libertarian Socialism

by ajohnstone - Socialist Party of Great Britain Tue Jun 27, 2006 17:01 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk na

Once again the contribution of the Socialist Party of Great Britain with its analysis of the nature of the Russian state pre-dating the council communists , pre-dating Tony Cliff , has been ignored . Come on . Credit where credit is due .
The SPGB was probably the earliest Marxist political party to declare the regime as non-socialist and over the years one of the most consistent critics of the proponents of Bolshevism .

1918-http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/archive/revolution%281918%29.pdf
1920- http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/centenary/bolshevism(1920).pdf

Also , the book by a current and an ex member of the SPGB is worthy of mention -State capitalism: The wages system under new management, Buick, Adam; Crump, John, New York: St. Martin's Press,
http://netx.u-paris10.fr/actuelmarx/economarx/ab090305.htm

by prole cat - ctc supporter (personal capacity) Wed Jun 28, 2006 19:51

I find the argument convincing, that the Soviet Union (and similar regimes) were analogous to giant corporations operating under near monopoly conditions. And, that their recent, fairly smooth, conversions to more traditional forms of capitalism supports this analysis.

What, then, are we to make of the decisions in Russia and China to convert to traditional, privately held capitalism, and the rejection of the state capitalist experiment? Surely capitalism is not retreating from monopolist forms- so what is the significance of these developments? Merely a victory for the western capitalists over the eastern, in their continuing power struggles, or something more significant?

by Red and Black Action Wed Jun 28, 2006 21:26

The question of the transition from state capitalism is an interesting one.

Both the USSR and China moved towards more market-driven economies from the 1970s, and it is not coincidental that this followed after an international crisis of capital accumulation. It seems the state capitalist model was unable to move from heavy industry towards more hi-tech industries like microelectronics - the industries, if you like, of the "third" industrial revolution. Was

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Thu Jun 29, 2006 04:20

The basic problem with Wayne's perspective is that it fails to offer a credible understanding of the nature of the dominant class in the USSR. This was not a capitalist class, which presides over a process of capital accumulation, driven by market competition. In particular, it disarms the libertarian Left in regard to Left coordinatorism. The dominant class in the USSR was what I call the coordinator class. This class has its position, not through ownership of capital, but through its relative monopolization over levers of decision-making and other things such as credtentials and certain kinds of expertise that enable it to dominate. Failing to recognize the existence of this class is fatal, because it leads to a failure -- traditional among libertarian communists -- to provide a way to prevent this class from gaining power. If the capitalist class is the only enemy, then this leads people to not see the point to opposition to the power of the coordinator class. This also disarms the working class in the face of Left coordinatorism. Left coordinatorism comes in a variety of forms -- both social democracy and Leninism are forms of Left coordinatorism in that their strategies and programs empower the coordinator class, not the working class. Left coordinatorism is the last defense of the class system when threatened by a working class that is threatening the class system. In order for capital to exist, there has to be market governance and market-based allocation in an economy. That's because the capital social relation is a power relation where owners of capital buy inputs and rent labor in order to sell commodities to expand their capital (i.e. their economic power). The Soviet Union was not a market-governed system. The fact that there were prices and money does not show that it was a market-governed allocational system. The fact that Wayne admits that the system was centrally administered (he doesn't tell us how exactly this differs from centrally planned) is inconsistent with it being a market-governed system of allocation. The existence of prices and money does not show that the USSR was capitalist because money only exists as capital when the capitalist framework exists, that is, a framework that enables capital owners to buy resources and rent labor power to expand their capital thru sale of commodities on the market. Money and prices could exist in a classless, labor-managed economy. Moreover, I would argue that they must continue to exist in such an economy for it to be viable. But if it is possible for money and prices to coexist with a classless, labor-managed economy, then their existence in the USSR doesn't show that the USSR was capitalist. Moreover, the existence of small markets does not show that the USSR was capitalist. Money and markets existed in ancient Rome and other ancient socities, as well as in feudalism. But, as Karl Polanyi argues convincingly in "The Great Transformation," those societies were not market-governed. Markets existed only as small, subordinate elements. They were controlled by other social institutions, like the medieval guilds that set prices and outlawed interest income in medieval cities. Thus prices and money can take on different forms depending on the economic power structure, and their existence in the USSR does not show that the USSR was capitalist. Moreover, it is a mistake to define the mode of production in the USSR and other Communist-run countries as "stalinist." Stalinism is a particular type of political system, characterized by the use of political terror and totalitarian monopoly of a hierarchical political party, i.e. a highly repressive political system. This is a highly misleading term for the mode of production in the USSR because coordinatorism could exist without that kind of repressive political retgime. Once again, Wayne's analysis disarms the libertarian Left because it fails to look at the broader danger of Left coordinatorism and the coordinator class.

by Wayne Price Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:43

Prole Cat and Red & Black Action raise the question of why the collectivist bureaucracy returned to traditional shareholding capitalism. Of course it had certain vulnerabilities and a brittleness in its rule (as Tom has pointed out, they could not pass on wealth individually to their heirs--although few children of the high bureaucrats lacked for good jobs and incomes). But why now, after 65 years of apparently successful rule? I think that this only appears to be a victory of capitalism over *socialism,* of the West over the East. Actually, it is part of the world-wide crisis of capitalism. The economic decline of capitalism everywhere, its underlying falling rate of profit, its maintainance by a mountain of fake money (fictitious capital), its vast debts, its repeated crises which break out in various places from time to time (such as in South East Asia or in Latin America or Africa, but also being felt in Europe and in the growing indeptedness and bad trade balance of the U.S.). The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was deeply in debt, having borrowed heavily from Western banks and other capitalist sources, due to their inefficiencies. It got to be too much, they were too brittle, and they collapsed, The rulers had to manage a change to more openness or be overthrown. They managed to outfox the workers (who had become suspicious of any sort of "socialist" alternative) and set up (for now) a new capitalist form. (Obviously, this is very condensed.)

Tom fears that I am dangerously capitulating to the coordinator class. What can I say? In the three parts of my essay, I have repeatedly argued that the implications of my view are radical democracy, self-management, an end to the capital-labor relationship, an end to the distinction between mental and manual labor, and the abolition of the state. This is consistent with the most radical insights of socialist anarchism, autonomist Marxism, and libertarian socialism. This is the direct opposite of what Tom thinks the implications of state capitalist theory would be. So what's the problem?

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Thu Jun 29, 2006 11:59

capitalism may be in crisis, but the nature of a capitalist crisis is different than the crisis of the coordinatorist Soviet economy. A classical capitalist crisis of over-accumulation leads to structural unemployment growing. The crisis in the USSR had the opposite effect -- a labor shortage.

As I've argued before, Wayne doesn't present a plausible analysis of the nature of the coordinator class, that is, its role in social production. It is incorrect to try to analyse this in terms of the distinction between "intellectual" and "manual" labor. There is much "intellectual" activity in the work of the proletarian class. Capitalists don't need automatons. The issue is *empowering* work, the types of positions that give control over the labor process and overall operation of the corporation and the system in general. There was a distinction between "intellectual" and "manual" tasks in Marx's time but the coordinator class didn't emerge til capitalist accumulation had reached a certain stage, at the end of the 19th century. The coordinator class is built through a systematic redesign of work and structures of control, a process of accumulation of the empowering aspects of work into the hands of a class other than the working class. If there is only labor and capital, this leads to the false conclusion that it is sufficient for liberation of the working class that ownership is changed. If Wayne agrees that the corporate-style hierarchies have to dismantled, then why does this follow from his theory? And how exactly are they to be changed?
Moreover, the theory of the coordinator class gives us an insight into the class nature of social democracy and Leninism, as these political formations are forms of Left coordinatorism, that is, they empower a class other than the working class, namely, the coordinators. This fact is not revealed by the "state capitalism" theory.

by Wayne Fri Jun 30, 2006 10:47 drwdprice at aol dot com

To read Tom (or the latest book by Michael Albert) you wouldn't realize that anarchism was denouncing authoritarian and statist "socialism" long before Parecon was a twinkle in Michael Albert's eye. The quotation from Kropotkin at the beginning of this Part is to the point.

Theorists of "state capitalism" are fully aware of the rise of the middle class bureaucracy (or whatever you want to call it) under capitalism, and the taking of power by this same bureaucracy as a collective ruling class under "Communism." As I have pointed out. And they draw the same conclusions which Tom draws, that collectivism is not enough, but that the whole economy and technology has to be reorganized, including the work process. Except they said it long before Tom did.

As I pointed out, all the "state capitalist" theorists I cited (except for 2) developed some sort of libertarian socialism: anti-statist, anti-bureaucratic, pro-self-management, versions of radical democracy and socialism. In Part II, I quote Castoriadis about how the workers should reorganize production and technology after a revolution to end the distinction between order-givers and order-takers. Written in the 1940s.

So Tom should get off his high horse and stop claiming that only Parecon theorists have discovered the danger of authoritarian collectivism. Parecon advocates have made a contribution and are part of the discussion, but they hardly have a monopoly on libertarian socialism.

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Fri Jun 30, 2006 12:23

Wayne seems to be saying that everything was already worked out a century ago, so apparently all we have to is read the old masters. I'd say that is very bad advice. A living movement must be able to learn from experience, and evolve and improve its ideas. A careful examination of what the CNT did in Spain in the '30s should make it plain how wrong-headed that approach is. Social anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism in fact presupose a polity, a structure of popular polical power. But anarchists talking about "abolition of all authority", "abolition of all government" and such was terrible advice. It led to the failure to consolidate the proletarian revolution in Spain, which set the stage for the rise of the Communist party. I think it is simply false that the left of a hundred years ago, whether anarchist or marxist, had an adequate theory of the class of managers and professionals, whose power is not based on ownership. Kropotkin's discussion of "intellectual" and "manual" labor never discusses the role of professionals in social production, for example.

I certainly did not say or imply, on the other hand, that Michael Albert and the parecon theory invents everything from scratch. Their whole governance structure for the economy derives from the councilist & syndicalist tradition. The CNT's program for Spain in the '30s had basically the same structure. But the CNT also tended to set up new management structures that could have evolved into a coordinatorist mode of production. They didn't have a clear concept of educating the working class en masse to take over those roles. In regard to Castoriadis, he was in fact an advocate of central planning, as were the major advocates of planning in the CNT in the '30s like de Santillan. If you look at "Workers Councils and the Economics of a Self-managed Society" by Castoriadis, take a look at his description of what he calls the "plan factory." Here it isn't a question of the plan emerging from proposals of the population in a decentralized way, but of a planning elite cooking up plans. What's new and important is the concept of participatory planning, and the theory of the basis of the coordinator class. This latter theory came about because of the work of a lot of people thinking in the '70s/'80s period about the rise of this class, and the process of Taylorist deskilling,
as in works by people like Braverman, Marglin, Noble and others. Should new thinking be simply tossed or ignored? That seems to be Wayne's suggestion.

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Fri Jun 30, 2006 12:55

There are two things that we need in relation to the strata intermediate between capital and labor:

(1) we need an understanding of what the basis is of the power of the intermediate classes over the working class, especially the class of managers and top professionals whose power isn't based on ownership. we can't work out a program to unravel that power without an understanding of what it's basis is.

(2) we need a program that tells us how we can unravel the power of this class.

Wayne says the answers to these questions already existed in classical socialist and anarchist literature. Okay, where?

by ajohnstone - socialist party of great britain Sat Jul 01, 2006 06:03 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk edinburgh , scotland na

Just so this is not just a two horse race debate - i have added these comments from Dave Balmer , a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain , posted on their discussion list
alan johnstone

The suggestion that the ideas presented by the Parecon people are
somehow new is nothing but a chimera, it is nothing even upon a
superficial analysis but a fusion of old Leninist and Trotskyist
ideas re hashed and re packaged. It is little wonder that in the
Socialist Standard of April 2006 Michael Albert was keen to
correctly point out that;

"Our real difference is probably best encapsulated in your calling
the old Soviet Union State capitalist, and my saying that since it
didn't have private owners of the means of production, and it didn't
have markets, but it did have a ruling economic class composed of
those monopolising empowering tasks in the economy, it is far more
sensibly called not capitalist, not socialist , but coordinatorist,
after its ruling class."

The parecon position is essentially that it is not the soviet
economic model itself that is or was the problem but how it was
managed. The problem was that a coordinating managerial class, the
Communist Party, had monopolised the decision making process,
economic planning, taking it away from the control of the working
class. The new managerial class then proceeded to use that monopoly
of power to serve their own interests at the expense of the non
coordinating class.

In fact Alberts ideas are related to those of Trotsky and the ex
Trotskyist James Burnham, all that has changed is the skin,
from "degenerate workers state" to "Coordinatorist". It is not
particularly difficult I think to see parecon Coordinatorist ideas
presented below. One would hope that for an Anarchists finding such
antecedents to your new ideas might be somewhat embarrassing.

"Cannon, backed by Leon Trotsky held that the USSR was a
degenerated workers state while Shachtman and Burnham contended that
the Soviet Union was bureaucratic collectivist and thus not worthy
of being supported even critically. The specific event which led to
the dispute was the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939.

The party dispute led to Shachtman, Burnham and their supporters
leaving the SWP in 1940 but soon after Burnham broke with Shacthman
and left the communist movement altogether and worked for the Office
of Strategic Services during the war. After the war he called for an
aggressive strategy to undermine Soviet Union power during the Cold
War. In 1983 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from
Ronald Reagan. His ideas were an important influence on both the
neoconservative and paleoconservative factions of the American
Right."

For James Burnham;

"A new managerial class, rather than the working class, was
replacing the old capitalist class as the dominant power in society.
The managerial class included business executives, technicians,
bureaucrats and soldiers. He gave Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
as clear examples. Burnham's theory is sometimes thought to have
been influenced by Bruno Rizzi's 1939 book La Bureaucratisation du
Monde; but despite similarities, there is no evidence that Burnham
knew of the obscure book outside of some brief references to it by
Trotsky."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham

As an aside, in fact if you can call these ideas "Marxist" it is a
flat contradiction of Alberts statement;

"That is, Marxism obscures the existence of a class which not only
contends with capitalists and workers within capitalism, but which
can become ruler of a new economy, aptly called, I think,
coordinatorism."

And

"Far more important than these failures, what I want to focus on is
that in virtually every variant of Marxism, Marxist class theory
literally denies the existence of what I call the coordinator
(professional-managerial or technocratic) class and undercounts its
antagonisms with the working class as well as with capital. This
particular failing has long obstructed class analysis of the old
Soviet, Eastern European."



http://www.zmag.org/marxismdebate.htm

And from ourselves;

"was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in
1936. This is the origin of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is
a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped
political power from the working class but without changing the
social basis (nationalisation and planning).

This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously:
how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where
workers could be sent to a labour camp for turning up late for work
and shot for going on strike? Trotsky was only able to sustain his
point of view by making the completely unmarxist assumption that
capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist
bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production
relations. Marx, by contrast, had concluded, from a study of past
and present societies, that the mode of distribution was entirely
determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of
privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been
sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.

Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the
flimsiest of grounds: the absence of a private capitalist class, of
private shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath
their property. He failed to see that what made Russia capitalist
was the existence there of wage-labour and capital accumulation not
the nature and mode of recruitment of its ruling class.

Trotsky's view that Russia under Stalin was still some sort
of "Workers State" was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism
within the ranks of the Trotskyist movement is itself which, since
1938, had been organised as the Fourth International. Two
alternative views emerged. One was that Russia was neither
capitalist nor a Workers State but some new kind of exploiting class
society. The other was that Russia was state capitalist. The most
easily accessible example of the first view is James Burnham's The
Managerial Revolution and of the second Tony Cliff's Russia: A
Marxist Analysis. Both books are well worth reading, though in fact
neither Burnham nor Cliff could claim to be the originators of the
theories they put forward. The majority of Trotskyists, however,
remain committed to the dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers
State".

http://www.worldsocialism.org/wsm-pages/trotsky.html

We can see some of the parecon perspectives in article by Chris
Spanos at;

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=26&ItemID=9093

Here "Central Planning" is the flawed coordinatorist system
of the old soviet system and "Democratic Planning" is the Parecon
system the difference is that in "Democratic Planning" the "central
plan" is democratically decided. Thus for the centrally planned
economy;

"The first system is "Central Planning". When we think of
central planning, the model that comes most to mind is the Soviet
model of central planning that was prevalent throughout most of the
20th Century. Other countries that adopted variations of that model
are North Korea, Cuba, China, as well as Eastern Europe. They all
had different variations. But the broad strokes, the broad contours
of those economies were essentially the same -- centrally planned
economies.


The dominant characteristics of centrally planned economies are
…………………………… a central planning authority; the economic outcome of
society was generated by an economic plan. There were a variety of
different economic plans that were used; there were short term
plans, annual plans, five year plans, long term plans, etc. However,
the key issue here is that implementing a plan was mandatory."

As it would have to be in Parecon.

"That is why this kind of economy is often referred to
as "Directive Planning", "Imperative Planning", or as a "Command
Economy". The economic process of central planning can be described
as a mammoth bureaucracy where hundreds of thousands of
functionaries in the Communist Party, the state administration, the
firm, and cooperative management, and the mass organizations
negotiate, calculate, renegotiate and recalculate before the
millions of planning commands emerge at all levels. Basically,
planners would call in information about the state of the economy
and the state of peoples economic desires within society. They would
massage that information and come up with a plan to be implemented.
They would decide who was going to do what, what gets produced, how
much is produced and where it's going to go."


All this "mammoth bureaucracy" and "calculate, renegotiate and
recalculate before the millions of planning commands emerge at all
levels" of a centrally planned economy would be nothing like the
Democratically Planned Parecon described at some safe distance later
for those with a short attention span. Thus in ;

"Participants are organized into federations of workers and
consumers councils who negotiate allocation through "decentralized
participatory planning". Workers in worker councils propose what
they want to produce, how much they want to produce, the inputs
needed and the human effects of their production choices. Consumers
propose what they want to consume, how much they want to consume and
the human effects of their consumption choices. "Iteration
Facilitation Boards" (IFB) generate "indicative prices", using both
quantitative and qualitative information, which is used by workers
and consumers to update their proposals for further rounds of
iterations. The IFB whittles proposals down to a workable plan
within five to seven iterative rounds. A plan is chosen and
implemented for the coming year."

A democratically "mandated" plan presumably.

Elsewhere in this interesting piece we have a familiar resume to
Trot watchers of what went wrong in the Soviet "Revolution
Betrayed" and more of Burnham`s,winner of Reagan's Presidential
Medal of Freedom, Managerial Revolution ideas ;

"The rational behind the system of central planning was that the
planners could, using as much information as they could gather, get
the best possible economic plan for society. And many people
honestly believed that they were in the first stages of socialism;
that communism, a future stateless and classless society was to
come.

They had a grand vision for society and for human beings and
therefore had some honourable motivations. However, there were
others who were corrupted by bureaucratic power, by filling those
institutional roles and relationships within the model of central
planning. They had the information. They had power. Their capacity
for decision making far surpassed how much they were affected by the
outcome of their economic plans. They were the planners and
managers, what is called the coordinator class. They accrued
material rewards that were associated with the kind of power they
held over the economy. Likewise, workers decision making power was
token and dwarfed in comparison to that of the coordinators."


And some more standard Trot and leftwing ideas on how and why it all
went terribly wrong;

"Internal explanations range from war ("war communism"), civil war,
famine, and rapid industrial development of a largely rural country
in competition with western capitalist nations. External factors
were hostile western nations forcing a Cold War onto the Soviet
Union causing the SU to focus primarily on military
industrialization."

After some faint praise for the Yugoslav experiment we have
something interesting;


"Also, by using markets we assume that human nature is greedy,
individualist and competitive. I would even argue that this is true
for all the above cases of Market Socialism; where people did have
some very strong ideals that were honourable, unfortunately, the
market institution, and I would say, Market Socialism, makes these
assumptions about human nature as well. They don't try to imagine
more liberating institutions or human behaviour."


Perhaps Chris Spanos could address this to his fellow Pareconists
Tom Wetzel who makes "these assumptions" and clearly fails "to
imagine more liberating institutions or human behaviour." like free
access socialism for example. So from Tom Wetzel;


"For one thing, isn't this"

ie To each according to need;

"just an encouragement to the most greedy and aggressive to consume
more, and leaving less for those who are not as self-assertive of
their "need" or who have more scruples? And is that the sort of
result we want to encourage? And don't we want to limit the amount
of time we all have to spend working? And how can we do that if
there is no limit to what people consume?"

http://www.zmag.org/parecon/writings/wetzel_emancipation.htm

So much for;

"Parecon is the most serious effort I know to provide a very
detailed possible answer to some of these questions, crucial ones,
based on serious thought and careful analysis."-- Noam Chomsky


And just to injure us some more with a tarred brush from Michael
Albert;

"First there is Marxism's general taboo against "utopian"
speculation. Second, Marxism tends to presume that if economic
relations are desirable other social relations will fall into place.
Third, Marxism confuses what constitutes an equitable distribution
of income.

"From each according to ability to each according to need" is
utopian and curtails needed information transfer and has in any
event never been more than rhetoric for empowered Marxists and their
alternative "from each according to work and to each according to
contribution to the social product" is not a morally worthy maxim
because it would reward productivity, including genetic endowment
and differential tools and conditions. And fourth and most damning,
in practice and in its substantive prescriptions (though not always
it rhetorical entreaties), Marxism approves hierarchical relations
of production and command planning or markets as means of
allocation. "

http://www.zmag.org/marxismdebate.htm

From Dave Balmer
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/30507

SEE ALSO:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/30422

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/30382

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/30376

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Sat Jul 01, 2006 11:26

This cat from the Socialist Party of GB is, I'm afraid, hopelessly confused. The idea that Trotsky recognized the coordinator class is not only ridiculous but contradicted by the evidence he presents. To say that the the Soviet Union was a "workers state" was Trotsky's way of saying that a proletarian mode of production actually existed in the Soviet Union. Trotsky denied that there was a new mode of production that was based on a class other than labor or capital in the USSR. Hence he was denying precisely what the thesis of coordinatorism asserts, namely, that the USSR was a new mode of production based on a new ruling class dominating and exploiting the immediate producers.

According to Burnham's theory, as laid out in "The Managerial Revolution," "managerialism" is a universal historical tendency. He viewed Nazism, as shown in the SPGB cat's quotes, as a form of this, thus denying that the German economy was still capitalist. He also looked at the growth of power of the managerial hierarchy in American corporations as another evidence that the capitalists were on the way out. Moreover, Burnham's theory of the "managerial class" was his road out of socialism because he came to the conclusion that this was a universal edict of History, and thus that worker power was impossible. This "inevitablism" was a product of his Marxist background.

This is not what I would say, or any other theorist of the coordinator class. First, the coordinator class, tho the capitalists had to concede some power to it through the growht of the corporations and the state, is not the dominant class within capitalism, but is subordinate to the capitalists. Burnham's confusion comes from his failure to look at the role in social production of the coordinator class. He suffers the same defect as his mentor, Schachtman, in emphasizing the political sphere. Thus he sees the growth of state regulation in the fascist countries and in the New Deal in the USA as somehow sufficient as a basis of class, but this fails to look at their role in social production, as distinguished from their role in the political/state sphere. Thus Schachtman's "bureaucratic collectivism" thesis looks at the political leaders of the USSR as the ruling class because of their politically dominant position -- this shows how his position evolved out of Trotsky's. But the theory of the coordinator class is quite different. We look at the role of managers and top professionals in the labor process, and in social production generally, for an understanding of their class position.

The coordinator class position rests on a relative monopolization of empowering conditions in social production itself. This is manifested in the concentration of decision-making in hierarchical structures and concentrations -- appropriation -- of certain forms of expertise needed in the economy. The coordinator class is not only the managers but also top professionals like top engineers who design systems to control workers, lawyers, finance officers, and so on.This class is not defined, note, by occupational title, since people doing engineering work can find their jobs taylorized and in a more worker-like subordination. Capitalism is a dynamic system, continually re-organizing production, and thus there is a large boundary area between the working class and the coordinator class.

Moreover, the cat from SPGB makes a common mistake when he asserts that parecon is a form of "democratic planning," assuming that there is some single decision-making structure that elaborates the plan, like a national congress, or a national vote on the plan, or something like that. But that is not the case. Parecon is a decentralized system of negotiation between people as workers and as consumers, based on proposals initiated by individuals, workplace assemblies, neighborhood assemblies, and federations of these by areas of geographic scope, depending on who is mainly affected by the particular decision. To have an entire plan decided "democratically" by national congress or a national vote would be a violation of self-management because there are many decisions that do not affect everyone equally. There are some issues that would need to be decided by the entire nation, perhaps issue of defense against external threats, but such issues are relatively few, because there aren't that many issues that affect everyone equally.

The idea that there is anything "Leninist" or "Trotskyist" about parecon is a ridiculous slander. The proposal derives from the traditions of the libertarian Left.

The idea that an economy could work without money i regard as hopelessly utopian in the bad sense of the word. I know that the SPGB doesn't agree with this statement, but in that case let them answer my arguments. The "abolish money" idea derives from a confusion between money and capital. Money is only capital within the capitalist framework, where it can be used, via the market, to gain resources and rent labor power to have commodities made which are then sold at a price greater than cost, thus expanding the capital (i.e. economic market power) of the capitalists. But in parecon allocation is not via the market, there is hired labor, and resources and jobs are allocated only to self-managing production groups that practice job-balancing, to avert the consolidation of a coordinatorist elite.

by Tom Wetzel Sat Jul 01, 2006 11:33

The last sentence

But in parecon allocation is not via the market, there is hired labor, and resources and jobs are allocated only to self-managing production groups that practice job-balancing, to avert the consolidation of a coordinatorist elite.

is missing a "not". it should say there is NOT hired labor in parecon.

The non-market allocation system in parecon is not a system of central planning, nor is it a market either.

If the cat from the SPGB disagrees with parecon's participatory planning, let him tell us what method of allocation of resources in production he would prefer as an alternative. As far as I can see there are only 3 alternatives:

1. market
2. central planning
3. participatory planning

so which is it?

by Ilan Shalif - AATW Sat Jul 01, 2006 17:32

Tom and others who claim there is a coordinators class of their own confuse the main factor of capitalism: EXPLOITATION.
They put the carriage befor the horses and claim that "power"
is the leading factor. Though the psychologist Adler promoted the human component of "the will to power" - he missed or devalued the more basic survival factors.
The whole capitalist system with its various factors is not making sence if you take the concept of exploiting out.
The state capitalism is just another way to exploit the majority of working people. The so called coordinator class lump togather the harshly exploited low level workers in the adminstration and the higher level adminstrators who get the luxeries and other benefits derived from exploiting the majority of working people - including the low level administrators.

by Wayne - NEFAC Sun Jul 02, 2006 01:17 drwdprice at aol dot com

I want to respond to one central argument of Tom's Pareconism: "Wayne's analysis disarms the libertarian Left because it fails to look at the broader danger of Left coordinatorism and the coordinator class." And, "the theory of the coordinator class gives us an insight into the class nature of social democracy and Leninism, as these political formations are forms of Left coordinatorism, that is, they empower a class other than the working class, namely, the coordinators. This fact is not revealed by the "state capitalism" theory."

Instead, I have argued (and I think demonstrated) that in fact "state capitalist" theorists do recognize the nature of the middle class bureaucratic- technological- managers under traditional capitalism, and do recognize that the ruling class in state capitalist societies are a collectivist bureaucracy. Recognizing that the ruling class is a collective bureaucracy, they (most of them) can draw the same conclusions that Pareconists draw from THEIR recognition that this ruling class is a collective bureaucracy ("coordinators"), namely "an insight into the class nature of social democracy and Leninism....they empower a class other than the working class."

For example, one "state capitalist" theorist, Sy Landy, writes in his introduction to Daum (1990),
"The victory of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union sent a message which jibed with the social attitude of large sections of the middle class professionals and bureaucrats everywere....There arose...the intelligentsia, which mushroomed especially during the prosperity boom following the Second World War. Dedicated to a radical reform of capitalism, many embraced the 'Soviet experiment' when it was safely divorced from proletarian leadership.
"The numerous defeats inflicted on the proletariat through the agency of Stalinism...deepened the cynicism of the intelligentsia toward the possibility of proletarian revolution....Workers were recognized not for their social power but for their numbers....Their salvation was the bright man's burden, the task of 'servants of the people,' of social engineers. Marxism as a science of human self-liberation was gutted." (p. 5)

Landy does not recognize that Marxism, even its original form, has both libertarian and authoritarian sides. Nor does he see the need to make self-management the center of a revolutionary program. No matter; most other "state capitalist" theorists are some sort of libertarian socialist. If Tom wants to argue that Parecon has a more detailed, concrete, and generally better vision of how a self-managed libertarian socialism would work, fine. But that hardly proves that self-management does not follow from theories of state capitalist bureaucratic rule.

A last point. Ilan points out that Pareconists do not understand "the main factor of capitalism: EXPLOITATION." This is supported by Tom's statement that under capitalism, profit is made by "hav[ing] commodities made which are then sold at a price greater than cost." This only seems to be true; really it is a typical absurdity of bourgeois economics. Profit is not created during exchange but in production, because the workers are paid a value less than the value they create. They work a certain number of hours to create a value in commodities equal to their wage, and then keep on working extra hours to create a surplus value in more commodities. This is exploitation in its capitalist form, and it is exactly the form under which the workers are exploited under "Communist" rule.

I do not know enough about the theory of the SPGB to comment on it.

by Tom Wetzel Sun Jul 02, 2006 03:46

You don't define how it is determined that something is a "need" but it since you say that commmittees of residents in communities decide what is important and assign points to reflect this, I take it this really means "wants." By having a collective entity such as a delegate body or committee of a community decide the consumer input, this system can only effectively articulate demand for public or collective goods, not private consumption goods. You also do not say how the inputs from the consumption end determine allocation of resources at the production end. In other words, you have both a structure for management of production and institutions for articulation of collective consumption requests, but no explanation of the relationship between them. Saying that people can take freely whatever they want is not a system that would tend to encourage solidaristic values but would tend to encourage greedy individualism because the individuals who are the least socially responsible would win in such a system. Having no prices means that people have no idea what the social cost is of the things they consume and therefore they can't be socially responsible even if they want to be. When this system of free access was tried out on a limited scale in Aragon in Spain during the Spanish revolution, it led to waste. For example, bread was free, so people tended to throw bread out, wasting it, or they might feed it to their pigs, which is a wasteful use of bread. Given that the individual cannot produce everything they want themselves, other people will be producing things for them, and if they work, they will produce things for others. Thus an exchange takes place, even if there is no money. "Exchange" exists in any possible economy, it doesn't just refer to market exchange. And the system you propose is an economy since you propose to economize on use of resources to produce things for our mutual consumption. Without a system that remunerates people based on their work effort or sacrifice in production of socially useful things, you provide no motivation for people to work. You have no way to prevent "free riders" -- parasites living off the community, and dragging down your communist system. Your system of "points" to reflect degrees of importance to people is in reality a form of accounting money, so you've not actually abolished money or the calculation of what is of value to people. "Value" doesn't have to mean market value.
So, in sum, you still didn't answer the question of what method is used to determine allocation of resources in production, because you've not said what the relationship of consumer input is to production decision-making. If there is no negotiation between people as consumers and as producers, you're left with a system of central planning in fact. And that means a system that tends to generate a new ruling class. It's not adequate, as means of consumer input, to simply look at what people take from distribution centers, because people take only what is already there. We need a way for people, as consumers, to propose new things. Also, if people aren't limited to a finite budget for their consumption, and then tell us what they want up to the limit of that budget, people aren't forced to make choices between alternatives, and thus you have no way to find out what they actually most prefer. And if you can't find out what people most prefer to be produced for them, you have no way to ensure that the economy is effective at producing what people most want. And hence your economy will not be efficient. The fact is, scarcity to some degree is inevitable for the simple reason that there are only 24 hours in the day. If you spend time doing one kind of production -- building houses, say -- you can't spend that time doing something else, such as tending a garden or building a school. How do you know that the things you spend time making are more important to people than the other things you could have spent your time doing? This brings out the fact that there is a finite limit to what we can produce, and not everything that we might want to be produced can be produced. That's the sense in which scarcity is inevitable, part of the human condition.

by ajohnstone - socialist party of great britain Sun Jul 02, 2006 21:38 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk na

Dave Balmer replies to T. Wetzel's CONFUSION ISN'T AN ARGUEMENT


Well I am certainly confused but I shall refrain from using
insulting terms like "cat" and will stick to the argument;

"thesis of coordinatorism asserts, namely, that the USSR was a new
mode of production based on a new ruling class dominating and
exploiting the immediate producers."

So under the soviet system the immediate producers are dominated and
exploited by a ruling class just like under capitalism. The fact
that the soviet ruling class were fixated with converting the
surplus value of the exploited immediate producers into further
expanding capital, the essence of the mode of capitalist
production, is surely beyond contention. So why is it not
capitalism?

The new coordinating class organised themselves collectively into
the body of the state which was the instrument which confronted and
exploited the working class. If the state in the USSR was not the
collective of the coordinating class exploiting the workers what was
it? We can split hairs over Coordinating Class capitalism,
coordinatorism, bureaucratic collectivist, or state capitalism, the
workers being exploited however would probably fail to see or be
interested in any differences in the mode, if there is any.

As to Burnham's theory, not ours, that became an issue in the
fourth international of;

"He also looked at the growth of power of the managerial hierarchy
in American corporations"

And our interpretation of Burnhams theory;

" was that Russia was neither capitalist nor a Workers State but
some new kind of exploiting class society"

"The most easily accessible example of" this "view is James
Burnham's The Managerial Revolution"

What is the difference between this and Alberts;

"the existence of a class" managerial "which not only contends
with capitalists and workers within capitalism, but which can become
ruler of a new economy, aptly called, I think, coordinatorism."

And;

"what I call the coordinator (professional-managerial or
technocratic) class and undercounts its antagonisms with the working
class as well as with capital. This particular failing has long
obstructed class analysis of the old Soviet, Eastern European."

As to Trotsky's view, that we have no sympathy with either, thus;

"The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. This is the origin
of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State"
in which a bureaucracy"

The coordinating class

"had usurped political power from the working class but without
changing the social basis (nationalisation and planning)."

Just what is the difference between this, Trotsky's position, and
the Parecon position other than claiming that the "degenerate
Workers State"/ "Coordinatorism", same thing different label, is an
as yet unsubstantiated new mode of production.

The Parecon argument must be that the planned exploitation of the
soviet workers by the coordinating class of the state, is state
exploitation rather than state capitalism. We may have an
interesting argument about whether or not the coordinating class is
the state.

Capitalism is where a class eg the coordinating class, through its
monopoly ownership and control of the means of production uses that
ownership and control to exploit a working class that have been
dispossessed of the means of their own subsistence in order to
provide unearned revenue for the ruling class and to expand the base
capital that they own and control.

We may also get another familiar anti state capitalist argument that
as no one owns capital in the soviet system there can be no
capitalists. Ownership of something without any control over the use
of it or benefits that can be derived from it makes ownership
meaningless. Control over something and obtaining benefits from it
is ownership, anything else is sophistry.

The coordinating class of the soviet system collectively controlled
and thus owned the capital, means of production, of the USSR, just
like share holders collectively own the capital of a company. They
therefore collectively capitalised on their monopoly control of the
means of production as a class and collectively collected their
state dividend obtained from the surplus value of the exploited
working class.

The possible assertion that as some of the Soviet coordinating class
were actively engaged in coordinating the production process and
therefore because of that were somehow not capitalists becomes
unconvincing when we look at the entrepreneurial capitalists of the
19th century.

The division of profits, representing the relative effective
control of capital between the owners of capital, "interest bearing
capital", and the "coordinating class" or entrepreneurial
capitalists that actually engage in the direct exploitation of
labour is dealt with in detail in chapter XXIII of Vol III. The
idea of a coordinating class exploiting labour is as old as that,
originally Marx's idea who the Pareconists are so quick to dismiss.

I never thought I would see the day of myself defending Karl Marx.


As to "there is not hired labour" in Parecon, well the fact that we
believe there will be hired labour is the whole point of our
objection to the Parecon argument. So in Parecon workers won't be
hired they will be remunerated.

Hire;
"To acquire the temporary use of (a thing) or services of (a
person) in exchange for payment."

Remunerate;
"To reward or pay for work, service etc"

A difference too subtle for me.

The "abolish money idea" does not derive for us from a "confusion of
money and capital" but from the idea of Karl Marx, abolish the wages
system.

Likewise the "allocation of resources" would be based on self
determined need and given according to self determined ability.

I don't remember ever saying Pareconists were Leninists or
Trotskyists but merely suggested that they shared some basic common
ideas.

If anybody is misrepresenting others ideas it is the :Pareconists
misrepresenting our and Marx's ideas as Leninist ones, again dare
I say it a habit also of the Trotskyists and Leninists.

"First there is Marxism's general taboo against "utopian"
speculation."

And then we are accused;

"The idea that an economy could work without money I regard as
hopelessly utopian."

I suppose our utopian speculation is "bad" as opposed to the "good"
utopian speculation of the Parecon people.


from :-http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/message/30598


So there is no market in Parecon.

So from ;
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=26&ItemID=10440
We have;
"If you want to consume coal and you have to pay more, you would
think twice."
"but in the negotiation process, if the demand exceeds the supply,
the price could go up."
"This will encourage consumers to find cheaper alternatives"
"Indicative prices help demand and supply converge in the end."

Confused you bet, just how many versions of Parecon are there

Dave Balmer

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Mon Jul 03, 2006 06:13

I'm not going to put much more effort into trying to straighten out the SPGB folks. Their political method is one of distortion and refusal to examine arguments of others on their own terms, which leads to their persistent distortion of the parecon view.

Writes Balmer:

"The Parecon argument must be that the lanned exploitation of the soviet workers by the coordinating class of the state, is state exploitation rather than state capitalism. We may have an interesting argument about whether or not the coordinating class is the state."

The state is not a class. A class is determined by its role in social production. The coordinator class differs fundamentally from the capitalist class in that its power in social production isn't based on ownership, but on a different structure of power, other than ownership. Their assertion that there is no distinction between ownership and control is just that, mere assertion. The lack of ownership weakens the position of a ruling class -- this is precisely the motivation for the Soviet coordinator class elements wanting to shift to capitalism. This was a revolution from above. The coordinator class has its power in virtue of a relative monopolization of conditions that empower it in production, giving it control over labor. This includes positions in management hierarchies as well as monopolization of certain forms of expertise. In the old Soviet Union the ruling class included not only the political leaders, but the Gosplan planning eite, the major industrial managers, and the generals in the armed forces. The USSR was a military-industrial state with this sector consuming 25% of GNP. The central allocation of resources led to a shortage of labor, which was the main source of crisis in the Soviet economy. This is not characteristic of a market-governed economy. A coordinator class does not have to be based on the state as owner of the economy. If you look at the Mondragon coops in the Basque country, the professionals and managers rule these coops. People who work running machines 40 hours a week don't have time to learn about engineering or accounting or business planning. They end up being at the mercy of the professional/managerial hierarchy. But this hierarchy does not formally "own" the coops. These coops are also a coordinatorist structure.

Writes Balmer:

"Capitalism is where a class eg the coordinating class, through its monopoly ownership and control of the means of production uses that ownership and control to exploit a working class that have been
dispossessed of the means of their own subsistence in order to provide unearned revenue for the ruling class and to expand the base capital that they own and control."

The problem here is that the SPGB's definition of capitalism becomes so abstract that they will have a hard time explaining how capitalism is different than feudalism or ancient slave systems. The slaves in ancient Rom had also been "dispossessed of their means of production" and were certainly exloited.

Writes Balmer:

"And then we are accused;

"The idea that an economy could work without money I regard as
hopelessly utopian."

I suppose our utopian speculation is "bad" as opposed to the "good" utopian speculation of the Parecon people."

Yes, the distinction is between what is actually viable and what is not. A moneyless economy would simply not work.

And, by the way, "cat" isn't a personal attack. It's a piece of American slang that has a somewhat affectionate connotation.

by ajohnstone - socialist party of great britain Mon Jul 03, 2006 07:17 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk na

i think my role as go -between , encouraging this dialogue between Dave and Tom , has come to an end . If either wish to continue , they can do so directly at this site or at the World Socialist Movement discussion forum

by Andrew - Anarkismo Mon Jul 03, 2006 19:08

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by ajohnstone - socialist party of great britain Tue Jul 04, 2006 17:33 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk na

(The need for this contribution is explained by the moderators guideline warning )

Tom's earlier desired an answer (and subsequent response that it appeared to be central planning ) of whether the SPGB and advocates of a moneyless economy desired one of three options for the allocation of resources -
"1. market
2. central planning
3. participatory planning"

We would rather describe our option as a self regulating , self adjusting inter-linked and inter-dependent system . Decisions will be made at different levels of organisation: global, regional and local with the bulk of decision-making being made at the local level. In this sense, a socialist economy would be a polycentric, not a centrally planned economy.
Free access to goods and services denies to any group or individuals the political leverage with which to dominate others .
This is more fully explained at :-
http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm
It is worth a read .

Industries and productive units could use mathematical aids to decision-making such as operational research and linear programming to find the most appropriate technical method of production to employ. As neutral techniques these can still be used where the object is something other than profit maximisation or the minimisation of monetary costs.

Another technique already in use under capitalism that could be adapted for use in socialism: so-called cost-benefit analysis and its variants. Naturally, under capitalism the balance sheet of the relevant benefits and costs advantages and disadvantagesof a particular scheme or rival schemes is drawn up in money terms, but in socialism a points system for attributing relative importance to the various relevant considerations could be used instead.

Such alternatives to central planning are more fully explained at :- http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm? fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=4018139&blogID=125680221&MyToken=e74668d4 -db9d-4bf3-a533-674f54df3b09
This too is well worth the time to read .

Since the needs of consumers are always needs for a specific product at a specific time in a specific locality, we will assume that socialist society would leave the initial assessment of likely needs to a delegate body under the control of the local community (although, once again, other arrangements are possible if that were what the members of socialist society wanted). In a stable society such as socialism, needs would change relatively slowly. Hence it is reasonable to surmise that an efficient system of stock control, recording what individuals actually chose to take under conditions of free access from local distribution centres over a given period, would enable the local distribution committee (for want of a name) to estimate what the need for food, drink, clothes and household goods would be over a similar future period. Some needs would be able to be met locally: local transport, restaurants, builders, repairs and some food are examples as well as services such as street-lighting, libraries and refuse collection. The local distribution committee would then communicate needs that could not be met locally to the body (or bodies) charged with coordinating supplies to local communities.

Once such an integrated structure of circuits of production and distribution had been established at local, regional and world levels, the flow of wealth to the final consumer could take place on the basis of each unit in the structure having free access to what is needed to fulfil its role. The individual would have free access to the goods on the shelves of the local distribution centres; the local distribution centres free access to the goods they required to be always adequately stocked with what people needed; their suppliers free access to the goods they required from the factories which supplied them; industries and factories free access to the materials, equipment and energy they needed to produce their products; and so on.

I had hoped that Tom would have taken on board that within th SPGB there does exist a flexability in determining allocation of resources and determinining the requirements and wishes of communities .

There does indeed remain with those of us who desire a moneyless economy a suspicion that Parecon wish for a capitalism without the capitalists , just as the anarcho-capitalists desire capitalism without the state. Who just are the real utopians ?
Alan

by dave - wsm Wed Jul 05, 2006 02:55 balmer_dave at yahoo dot co dot uk

Tom Wetzel says;

“The problem here is that the SPGB's definition of capitalism becomes so abstract that they will have a hard time explaining how capitalism is different than feudalism or ancient slave systems. The slaves in ancient Rome had also been "dispossessed of their means of production" and were certainly exploited.”

Absolutely breathtaking, I can only presume that our parecon Tomcat has some abstract notions of his own although from his response it is not possible to work which ones they are or how many. Does he not know what capital is or is it surplus value or feudalism or all three.

In my post that he refers to I stated twice what was the distinguishing feature of capitalism, once at the very beginning and again less than a page later that he actually quotes me in his reply. Thus;

“converting the surplus value of the exploited immediate producers into further expanding capital, the essence of the mode of capitalist production, “

And;

“Capitalism is where ………………… uses that ownership and control to exploit a working class that have been dispossessed of the means of their own subsistence in order to provide unearned revenue for the ruling class and to expand the base capital that they own and control. “



Capitalism is a system that has a propensity or primary objective to accumulate or expand capital, that is its essence that makes capitalism capitalism as opposed to some other mode of production or exploitation.




The feudal peasants would, for instance, labour on their “own” land for three days a week and live off what they produced, perhaps exchanging a portion of their produce for what they could not or did not produce for themselves.

Likewise they would labour for the rest of the week on the Lords land and the Lord we keep the produce of that labour for himself, surplus product. The Lord would consume a proportion of this product directly and perhaps the remainder he would sell or exchange for luxury items that he would likewise consume. The peasants were thus exploited as the Lord consumed but did not produce. The feudal lord consumed essentially all the surplus product and feudal society remained static and unchanging for centuries.



In capitalism the capitalists employs workers to work with his capital, machines, tools etc means of production. This capital however is the product of human labour itself that the capitalist has accumulated by exploiting his labourers. By paying his workers less value than they produce he accumulates the product of human labour, that is his capital, in the process of selling his product at a higher price than he pays for his workers, his surplus value.

As he competes with his fellow capitalists he is driven to convert portions of his profits, surplus value, to obtain more and more efficient means of production to keep up with his rivals. As a result the amount and quantity of the means of production factories, machines, tools etc in society expands relentlessly. The capital that we see around us today is human effort that has been expropriated, taken without return from our labouring and exploited ancestors and ourselves that has been accumulated and acquired, stolen , by our capitalist masters. Just as the feudal Lords took the effort, produce, of the peasants for no return.

The capital of the capitalists is their profits or surplus value that has been converted into the material form of surplus value, the means of production in order to produce yet more surplus value and capital and thus enslave more workers as capitalism spreads around the world and becomes global.

Thus of the two distinctive features of capitalism;

“The second distinctive feature of the capitalist mode of production is the production of surplus-value as the direct aim and determining motive of production. Capital produces essentially capital, and does so only to the extent that it produces surplus-value.”

Vol III chapter LI

He is talking here not of surplus value to be consumed but net production of surplus value, surplus value to be accumulated and retained in his possession.

In feudalism the mean of productions was restricted primarily to the land and as that was a finite natural resource the possibility of expanding it was limited and accumulating it, if it occurred, invariably meant just dispossessing another and thus no net expansion. Struggling for power over adversaries usually took a more direct physical form as opposed to capitalist rivalries where the victors were the ones with the biggest moneybags and most capital as big fish swallow smaller ones..

I asked;

“If the state in the USSR was not the collective of the coordinating class exploiting the workers what was it?”

To which I got;

“The state is not a class. A class is determined by its role in social
production.”

The state in capitalism is a body that facilitates and coordinates the exploitation of labour in the interests of the capitalist class and the collective interests of the exploiting class in general. Often arbitrating between the ruthlessly competitive members of the exploiting class and coordinating the collective action of the exploiting class in order to protect their own capital from being expropriated by similarly organised capitalists collectives, nation states.

The state thus as representing and acting in the interests of the capitalists or exploiters is synonymous with it and is the personification of capital and the exploiting class. The executive of the state frequently are at least lesser members of the exploiting class themselves and if not receive their income from unpaid and exploited labour, the profits of the exploiting class.

In fact the state, or at least as far as its executive is concerned, far from it not being the coordinating class, if you believe in such things, is the most probable place where you are likely to find them. In Parecon theory the state is a managerial class of coordinators that coordinates the coordinating class.

In fact the soviet state is a system were the two necessary functions of capitalism of direct exploitation of labour and the state coordination of that collective capitalist exploitation have been inseparably combined. Each direct exploiter of labour participates in the process of coordinating the collective exploitation of that labour, the state. Just as if in a large multinational each shareholder was obliged to participate in the direct exploitation of its hired labour in order to receive its dividend. The coordinating class in the soviet system are nothing other than shareholding “working” capitalists of a joint stock company and the board of directors is merely the executive of the state.

The State are the exploiters and the capitalists.

I do not think however that the “coordinating class” argument is without any merit at all.


I do have another slightly different theoretical take on this based on Karl’s ideas of profit of enterprise where the “functioning” capitalists, the coordinating class, work with others capital, interest bearing capital in orthodox western capitalism, and they split the profits between them. The profit of enterprise that goes to the “coordinating class” being p - i, where p is gross profit and i is the interest or that portion of profit that goes to the owners of capital.

The interest, i, in this case normally takes the form of shareholders dividends that they receive on their capital that is “worked” by the “coordinating class”.

In soviet Russia it is possible therefore that there is an analogous situation to Karl’s orthodox capitalism and two types of capitalists. It is possible that one section of the capitalist class in Russia were the de facto owners of capital receiving effectively interest, these may have been represented by the state proper.

The other section the entrepreneurial capitalists, in Soviet Russia the managerial class, would thus directly exploit the labourers in exchange for a portion of the profit or surplus value. The surplus value that went to the de facto interest bearing capital, as an analogy to Soviet Russia, would go to further expanding their and thus state capital. The entrepreneurial capitalists, the coordinating class, presumably would just consume and live off their potion of the profits that went to them.



Karl did state that their would always be an antagonism between these two sections of the capitalist class. In his time there was no clear cut difference between the two sections of the capitalist class as often a capitalist would be working with his own capital and at the same time exploiting workers with some else’s loaned capital.

These divisions are blurred but it is the case that with CEO’s and corporate directors who are clearly capitalists that they have been “loaned” others capital to make a profit on the understanding that there will be some pre arranged split between the CEO’s and the capitalists that have loaned the use of their capital to them.

This is I think a “new” idea that I am still working on.

by Tom Wetzel - WSA (personal capacity) Wed Jul 05, 2006 04:02

The distinction between pure investors and entrepeneurial captalists, who actively manage businesses, is not the same as that between coordinators and capitalists. Entrepreneurial capitalists also own substantial capital and are directly managing that capital. The basis of the coordinator class is not in ownership of capital, tho they are usually able to translate their class position (thru sharing in the exploitation of the proletarian class) into some small capital holdings. The basis of their power is in their relative monopoly of levers of decision-making in hierarchical structures and of certain key kinds of expertise needed in management of economic operations. The state is an institution, not a class, so it can't be the coordinators. I already gave an example to prove this, of how the coordinator class rules the Mondragon coops in the Basque country. Thus a coordinatorist economy does not in principle require that it be state-owned. In the case of the Soviet economy, there wasn't dynamic towards "expansion of capital" that Uncle Karl described. High growth rates in the early years of the planned economy were due to privimitive accumulation through dispossession of the peasantry, a forced increase in agricultural labor intensity, thus capturing a surplus from the peasantry for re-investment in heavy industry that was primarily oriented to the military-industrial system, the key basis of ruling class power in the USSR. Also, the absorption of women into the labor force. Because the soviet system, unlike capitalism, has a tendency towards inefficient use of labor and a labor shortage, the crisis of the Soviet economy was prevented for a number of decades thru this expansion of the labor force. But once the agricultural workforce and women were absorbed into industry, that one-time boost was done. And then the Soviet economy had a long-term tendency to stagnation and crisis. In other words, it did NOT have the permantnt tendency to growth that is characteristic of capitalism. Moreover, the form of exploitation of the working class in the USSR was fundamentally different than in capitalism since the ruling class did not have the sort of effective possession of the collective wealth and ability to securely pass this on to heirs that comes with a property system that allows private "capture" of this wealth.

Anyway, the main political disadvantage of the rigid marxist orthodoxy that allows only labor and capital, is that it disarms the working class from the task of dissolving the power of the coordinator class if it is to liberate itself from the class system. This is why Marxists and anarchists historically had no real program for dissolving the power of the coordinator class.

by Joe - WSM Wed Jul 05, 2006 05:08

Dave is I would guess a member of the World Socialist Movement and not the Workers Solidarity Movement. Dave as the WSM is one of the organisations involved in Anarkismo it might be less confusing if you didn't just use the initals in the organisation box.

by Tom Wetzel Wed Jul 05, 2006 07:10

Ajohnstone doesn't really answer my question. There in fact are no other alternatives for allocation other than central planning, participatory planning, and markets. He says:

"We would rather describe our option as a self regulating , self adjusting inter-linked and inter-dependent system ."

I think this is just rhetoric. Advocates of various forms of central planning have made similar claims.

by Tom Wetzel Wed Jul 05, 2006 07:22

ajohnstone says that SPGB proposes to use "cost/benefit analysis." This presupposes a way to measure social cost and social benefit. How do you do this? To measure benefit you need a way of measuring the degree of desire fulfillment provided. This means you need a way of measuring strength of consumer preference for alternative outcomes. A moneyless economy has no way to do that. The same problem with costs. With participatory planning, benefit is measured through the fact that each consumer and community has a finite budget, an entitlement to consume that is measured as a quantity of an accounting unit (a non-capital form of money). Because people must stay within their budget in their requests for product, the things they choose, given that their income is used up in proportion to the social cost of items consumed, tells us what their most prefer. In reality in any possible economy each person will have an income -- the totality of what they consume. What determines this? Under the moneyless scheme, those with the least social consciousness or least sense of social responsibility will win out because they will be more aggressive in taking "free" items from the distribution centers. Since there is no requirement of work the "free riders" who do no work will burden the system to the point of collapse. And why should we want to have a moneyless economy? It isn't needed to end class oppression. A classless economy can operate and be sustainable even if we require that able-bodied adults work, and even if we provide a limited budget to people for requests to the planning system for what they want produced for themselves, based on their work. These arrangements are consistent with complete self-management and the absence of bosses or any dominating class. They also do not presuppose a market system. Why, then, burden ourselves with the risky system of moneyless "free access," with its huge dangers of being dragged down by parasitical free riders?

by ajohnstone - Socialist Party of Great Britain y Thu Jul 06, 2006 04:31 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk na

Tom - "Ajohnstone doesn't really answer my question. There in fact are no other alternatives for allocation other than central planning, participatory planning, and markets."
Basically i was answering Tom's earlier charge that were advocates of central planning and when i do i then receive the charge of just offering empty rhetoric .
Planning in socialism is essentially a question of industrial organisation, ( By industrial organisation we mean the structure for organising the actual production and distribution of wealth) of organising productive units into a productive system functioning smoothly to supply the useful things which people had indicated they needed, both for their individual and for their collective consumption. What socialism would establish would be a rationalised network of planned links between users and suppliers; between final users and their immediate suppliers, between these latter and their suppliers, and so on down the line to those who extract the raw materials from nature.

I certainly would have no quibble about the description that we were proposing participatory economics but since that phrase appears to be another way of describing Parecon ideas i was loathe to use it .
Rather than "participatory economics" we have always expressed it as we have in our Object in Declaration of Principles - "democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth and by and in the interest of the whole community " and from our 3rd Principle -"democratic control by the whole people " ( http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/gbodop.html ) for the active involvement of all in the administration of society . The wording was not accidental but was deliberate to differentiate ourselves from the syndicalism and industrial unionism of the turn of the century . Indeed from the early days of the SPGB formation we have been critical of those currents which would have placed the actual producers in control of their individual industries which would have lead to sectional interests and competition and conflict with other workers , rather than social ownership by everyone . Our demand is that control should be by ALL of society .

Tom says the SPGB proposes to use "cost/benefit analysis." This presupposes a way to measure social cost and social benefit .

This was answered previously in the deleted article and can be read at the links .
"...in socialism a points system for attributing relative importance to the various relevant considerations could be used instead. The points attributed to these considerations would be subjective, in the sense that this would depend on a deliberate social decision rather than on some objective standard "- all rather simple when it comes to practical application ....What needs to be done will be done through discussion and agreement of priorities and needs .
The advantages /disadvantages and even the points attributed to them can, and normally would, differ from case to case. So what we are talking about is not a new abstract universal unit of measurement to replace money and economic value for reaching rational decisions . Simple common sense .

We have the mechanism of a self-regulating system of stock control, using calculation in kind, which would enable us to keep track of supply and demand . We have participation to allocate resources and mechanisms to decide priorities and best method .

But lets cut to the real chase and the real bone of contention for Tom , it seems to me .

I have been reading through Tom's comments here and elsewhere since arriving at this site and one thing which runs through them all repeatedly - and that is what we in the moneyless economy sector call the Lazy Greedy Man Arguement . The "free riders" , the "shirkers" , the "social parasites" , the "socially irresponsible " as he has variously described them .

Come common ownership and we have all the lazy and greedy , all the able -bodied idle , as the Victorians called them in the Poor Law legislation , all rushing in to empty the shelves and selfishly hoard , just because its free. Or the lesser crime of taking what they don't require . Or they will refuse to pull their weight at work and live off the fruits of other's labours .

Of course , it won't be Tom and his friends doing this , always will be the other person , but , oh no , not him . He is a very socially responsible aware person . Only thing is , others aren't . Yup , free access won't work because of human nature ?

I went to the doctor today . Here in the UK visits to a doctor is free , and , hey , i saw only the sick and the unwell there ....where were all those healthy but greedy people wanting their free doctors examination just because it is free . I prefer that anecdotal evidence , Tom, to your Spanish peasant in the 30s feeding bread to pigs , ( which i would hazard to guess was an isolated and an exception example ) .

By a fortuitous coincidence there is featured an article on the human nature myth in this month's Socialist Standard ( http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/jul06/text/page10.html )

I don't share your pessimism about the human character , Tom . People change when circumstances and situations change . We have always accepted that as anarchists and socialists and left Original Sin to the religiously blinkered .

Nor do i believe that we cannot support non-producers . ( All you unappreciated and undiscovered poets and artists out there , take a big sigh of relief and don't fret , for socialism won't condemn you to your ramshackle garrets because you concentrate your energies on your art and not in the fields or factories and we won't have some Soviet -style writers union to say whether you are approved or not . )

The SPGB roots are in what was called " The Impossiblists Revolt " , accused of impossiblism by the reformists and gradualists . They failed with their remedies . What's Occams Razor Theory say - the simplest explanations and the simplest solutions are more likely to be true . Little need to create such an intricate and elaborate construct as Parecon when all that is required is the understanding and co-operation of the majority of the people to establish socialism - a moneyless , state-less world .
No empty rhetoric in that aspiration .

comradely ,
alan

by Tom Wetzel Thu Jul 06, 2006 13:41

alan talks about
"democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth and by and in the interest of the whole community " and from our 3rd Principle -"democratic control by the whole people "

If this means a single democratic vote or channel of decision from the whole population, then it is a system of central planning. Also, denying workers management of industries is a violation of the human need for self-management. Self-management means having a say over decisions to the degree they affect you. Many decisions in workplaces affect mainly the people working there. To deny them self-management over those decisions is a violation of their freedom. And it implies also the probable existence of a managerial hierarchy over them.

Continuing:
"I went to the doctor today . Here in the UK visits to a doctor is free , and , hey , i saw only the sick and the unwell there ....where were all those healthy but greedy people wanting their free doctors examination just because it is free . I prefer that anecdotal evidence , Tom, to your Spanish peasant in the 30s feeding bread to pigs , ( which i would hazard to guess was an isolated and an exception example ) ."

The relevant alloctional decision here is the total budget allocated for the NHS and the extent of the coverage provided, and the number of personnel provided, which determines things like wait time. In this case we are talking about a decision about a public good. Even here, tho, there is need to take into consideration the self-management of the work and the proposals of the workers, and this means some process of negotiation with them, if this is not to be just a top down hierarchy over them. But health care is a very special type of product, precisely because it is a high priority, and not something that people typically request more of than they need. But this can't be generalized to all things that people might want.

by ajohnstone - socialist party of great britain Thu Jul 06, 2006 15:58 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk na

Its all smoke and mirrors now , Tom , isn't it ?

I think you fully understand that day-to-day operation and management will be left in the hands of those who operate a production or distribution unit , that the choice of deciding methods and working conditions will remain their responsibility which will be from a inter-locking local to a world-wide level.
Choosing what to make and how much to make and where to make it and where to send it , however ,are decisions for the community and society as a whole . That's what meant by social ownership .

Did you have to invent some imaginery , anonymous bureaucracy , lording it over us to bolster your arguement ? And how often do we have to refute your charge that we are for central planning ?

And , of course , the purpose of my anecdote about my doctors visit was to draw out a specific point . It was not to give the NHS as an example of efficient allocation of resources or an example of the desired socialist structure . Heavens forbid .
It was used to counter your assumption that people are inherently anti-social and would seize selfish advantage in a world of free access , which is ,when you come down to it , the reason that Parecon insist on prices and wages and money .
Yup , Don't Trust the Workers .

still comradely
alan

by Tom Wetzel Thu Jul 06, 2006 16:14

I never said people are anti-social. Whether they will act so or not depends on the social framework. You should know that from your understanding of capitalism, that it is a system that encourages a "me first" mentality, lack of solidarity, social climbing and so on. My argument was that YOUR proposed structure will not in fact bring out the best that we are capable of, that it will encourage anti-social behavior. And there is no bureaucracy in parecon, but I think there will be any system of central planning, including yours.

Since you've started degenerating into distortions, perhaps the discussion is at an end.

by ajohnstone - Socialist Party of Great Britain Fri Jul 07, 2006 08:22 ajsc21755 at blueyonder dot co dot uk edinburgh scotland na

We shall let others judge for themselves who has been the more guilty of the distortion of whose ideas , shall we ?

nevertheless , remaining comradely
alan

by dave balmer - world socialist movement Sun Jul 09, 2006 09:26 balmer_dave at yahoo dot co dot uk

Pareconists, Plagiarisers, Dissemblers or Tomfools


“No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”


Apart from a myopic Parecon bird that is , which can see the difference between hire and remunerate.


http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/animalfarm/10/


George Orwell on James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution;

“As shortly as I can summarise it, the thesis is this:

Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by Burnham, under the name of ‘managers’. These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organise society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial’ societies………..”


http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh


“Far more important than these failures, what I want to focus on is that in virtually every variant of Marxism, Marxist class theory literally denies the existence of what I call the coordinator (professional-managerial or technocratic) class and undercounts its antagonisms with the working class as well as with capital. This particular failing has long obstructed class analysis of the old Soviet, Eastern European, and Third World non-capitalist economies, and of capitalism itself.”

And;

“But even more, this coordinator class can actually become the ruling class of a new economy with capitalists removed and with workers still subordinate. That is, Marxism obscures the existence of a class which not only contends with capitalists and workers within capitalism, but which can become ruler of a new economy, aptly called, I think, coordinatorism.

Finally, the really damning point is that this new economy that I call coordinatorism, is familiar. It has public or state ownership of productive assets and corporate divisions of labor. It remunerates power and/or output. It utilizes central planning and/or markets for allocation. It is typically called by its advocates market socialism or centrally planned socialism. It is celebrated as the goal of struggle in every Marxist text that offers a serious economic vision. It has been adopted by every Marxist party that has ever redefined a society's economic relations. It is prevalent, that is, yet it is barely conceptualized at all.”



Michael Albert

http://www.zmag.org/marxismdebate.htm


"I wrote The Managerial Revolution in 1940; the American edition was published in 1941. ... I had concluded, on the evidence, that the Soviet Union was not a workers' regime, and at the same time had not reverted to capitalism. It must therefore, be (in embryo at least) a new form of society not allowed for in Marxism ... This new form I christened "managerial society. ..."

James Burnham

“Our real difference is probably best encapsulated in your calling the old Soviet Union State capitalist, and my saying that since it didn’t have private owners of the means of production, and it didn’t have markets, but it did have a ruling economic class composed of those monopolising empowering tasks in the economy, it is far more sensibly called not capitalist, not socialist , but coordinatorist, after its ruling class.”

Michael Albert, April 06, Socialist Standard

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WSM_Forum/

by Tom Wetzel Sun Jul 09, 2006 17:28

Apart from the name-calling at the outset
I can't see you've added anything.

by Tom Wetzel Sun Jul 09, 2006 17:43

Let me summarize the differences between James Burnham's theory of the "managerial revolution" and the theory of the coordinator class.

For Burnham, this class was said to be the dominant class in Nazi Germany and in the USA under the New Deal, the capitalists were becoming unimportant, the managers were taking over, through the concentration of capital in huge bureaucratic firms and the increasing power of the state to control economies. Moreover, for Burnham this was an "inevitable" trend that made a labor-managed society impossible.

Burnham's theory doesn't look at the role played by top professionals and managers in actual social production. It failed to understand how the capitalists were still dominant in countries like Germany and the USA. It failed to take into consideration that the emergence of the coordinator class did not imply that a labor-managed economy is an impossibility. His inevitable-ism isn't warranted. Burnham doesn't understand that top professionals who are not managers are nonetheless part of the same class because of the role they play in the control of labor.